by Nicole Trope
‘Perhaps you could help us carry out some of our stuff,’ he said to me. His normal voice was soft with a faint English accent. I actually looked around to see if he was talking to anyone else. ‘I mean you, Rose,’ he said.
My heart fluttered and I felt my hands get clammy. ‘How do you . . .?’
‘Know your name? Your friend Lulu told me. I think she wants me to talk to her, but I only have eyes for you.’
‘For me?’ I said, and my voice embarrassed me by coming out in a high-pitched squeak.
‘Yes, for you,’ he said in his velvet voice. I could have listened to him speak forever. His blond hair was long at the back, curling slightly at his collar, and he looked as though he was wearing makeup around his eyes, emphasising his long lashes and the bottomless blue of his irises. He could have taken home any woman in the room, including the teachers, who were much closer to his age. His beauty had transformed the staffroom. The teachers who had joined us for tea were all women and they stood straight-backed with their chests out, casting sideways glances at him. The air fizzed a little as Simon was admired.
I’m not sure how I managed to get any words out, but I asked Mrs Bennet if I could help and she said yes. I carried his sword and his crown. He hadn’t really needed my help.
‘Come and have a coffee with me,’ he said.
‘I’m not allowed to date.’
‘It will be our secret, then.’
‘My mother will be angry, and my father—’
‘Don’t worry about them. Tell me a place to meet you after school and I’ll be there.’
When I’d turned fourteen I had begun a campaign to get my parents to allow me to walk home from school and stop at the shopping centre, which was only a block away from our house. ‘No, absolutely not,’ said my father. ‘No,’ said my mother, but they underestimated my determination. I raged and argued. In the end I used a very powerful weapon to obtain this small measure of freedom. I stopped eating.
They gave in after two days. My mother was almost beside herself, locked in the memory of her own mother trying to find food for the family during the war, but I had won. I was allowed to walk home from school as long as I was home by five. I was never even a minute late. I knew that the leniency I had been shown would be easily retracted if I made that mistake.
I gave Simon the name of the small cafe where Lulu and I sometimes shared a piece of cake and a milkshake. I felt daring and brave and petrified at the same time. I was never allowed to go out with a boy my parents had not met and approved of, and then I was only allowed out in a group. Simon was very definitely not a boy.
‘I’ll be there,’ he said. ‘I will wait for you forever.’
I barely remember the rest of the day. I know I was chastised for not paying attention in every class until the final bell rang.
That afternoon he was already there waiting. I had dragged Lulu along with me without telling her about the planned meeting. If he’s not there I won’t care, if he’s not there I won’t care, I kept repeating to myself as we walked. When I saw him waiting for me, I wished I hadn’t made her tag along.
She’d spotted him first. ‘Oh my God, just look who it is,’ she said, and she waltzed up to his table. She was always so bold, so sure of a favourable reaction from any boy she looked at. I hung back while they talked, certain that now he had taken another look at her he wouldn’t want anything to do with me.
‘Come and sit down, Rose,’ he said to me, looking around Lulu, and I did so without thinking. ‘I’ve asked Lulu if she could give us some time alone, and she has kindly agreed.’
I looked up at Lulu. Her cheeks were crimson and I knew from the way she looked at me that she was furious. ‘Don’t tell, okay?’ I said. She could end things for me before they even began. Our mothers were coffee acquaintances. She nodded brusquely and left the cafe. I knew she wouldn’t say anything. I had covered for her many times whenever she wanted some time alone with one of the boys at our school.
When she was gone I wished she had stayed. I couldn’t think of a single intelligent thing to say.
‘So, Rose, beautiful flower of a girl, tell me about yourself,’ Simon said, and over chocolate milkshakes I did. He watched me as I talked, stumbling over words and giggling because his gaze was so intense.
‘What did you see in me?’ I asked him when we celebrated our fifth anniversary. I had held onto the question for years, never brave enough to ask it before then.
‘Oh, Rose, you have no idea how beautiful you are. The moment I saw you I wanted to touch you. I liked the tilt of your head and the colour of your hair. You held yourself with so much grace and you were so serious. Even during the play I was looking at you. I wanted to unwind your braid and run my fingers through your hair. I wanted to be near you.’
I had kissed a boy before I met Simon, but only one. I was thirteen and at a party where we were playing spin the bottle. My parents would have forbidden me to go if they’d known what was to happen, but I knew to keep the true nature of parties to myself. I think the boy, Mark, was disappointed when the bottle stopped at me. He had probably been hoping for Lulu.
Simon had a car, a small Toyota that looked to be on its last legs. He drove me home and dropped me off a few houses away, and he kissed me. It was very different to be kissed by a man. It was different and wonderful and it made me think of things that had until then only been on the edge of my consciousness. I had thought of sex as something that would happen far into my future, but once Simon kissed me I knew it would happen soon. I knew it and I was also aware that Simon was now completely and utterly in charge of my life. It only took a couple of hours one afternoon, but then that’s all it usually takes. He led the way, and he continued to do so all through our lives. I never felt bullied or pushed, but I usually acquiesced to his wishes. It is how we began, and it was only at the very end of our lives together that things changed.
It only takes a moment to fall in love. I’m sure Robert was in love with Portia two minutes after he met her. I had been making my way quietly through my life, reading books and doing as I was told to do. I stood no chance against the beauty and charisma of someone like Simon.
‘You’re just a child!’ my mother shrieked when I announced one afternoon six months later that Simon had asked me to marry him.
We had continued to see each other in secret. I had not even thought of bringing him home. He was too old, he was not Polish, and my parents didn’t know his parents. I couldn’t even imagine a set of circumstances under which they would approve of him. I had grown adept at lying. Lying to my parents, and I’m sure lying to myself as well. Every time the question of what he was doing with me rose in my mind, I pushed it away. I don’t care, I would say to myself.
Simon and I met every afternoon after school. Lulu kept our secret, thrilled—once she got over her pique—to be part of the drama, and Simon also kept her happy by sometimes bringing along another actor for her to meet. On weekends I slept over at Lulu’s place; her parents were a little more lax than mine and were happy to leave the two of us alone on a Saturday night. Simon took me or both of us out to dinner—cheap places he could afford. Lulu made us up with lipstick and eye shadow, garish blues and pinks that made us look older.
‘You don’t need all that rubbish,’ Simon said to me. ‘I prefer you with no makeup on your beautiful skin.’
‘I want to look older,’ I replied. ‘I don’t want to look like a child.’
‘You are far from a child, darling. You are a woman of exquisite beauty, and there is no need to hide yourself.’
We didn’t do much beyond kiss and touch, but I yearned to go further.
‘No, Rose,’ he would say, ‘not yet, not like this.’
My dreams were filled with sex. Sometimes I woke up in the middle of an orgasm and lay awake, shocked at what my body wanted. I whiled away hours in my bedroom thinking about what it would feel like to have his body on top of mine. My parents never noticed my abstraction. They worked long hours and if I brou
ght home consistent grades—they thought everything was fine, just as it had always been. ‘Moja piękna, mądra dziewczyna,’ my father would say whenever I presented him with an essay covered in compliments from my teacher. ‘My beautiful, clever girl.’
I had moments of guilt and doubt at my betrayal of them and of the values they had taught me, but I was happily drowning in Simon’s eyes and his smell. I didn’t take a breath without thinking of him.
Simon never pushed me, never asked me to do things I wasn’t ready for, but one afternoon, sitting in his little car with the windows fogged from our breath, he said, ‘I can’t stand it, Rose. I need to be near you all the time. Our lives are meant to be entwined. You need to marry me.’
I giggled. ‘Don’t be silly.’
‘Look at me,’ he said, and he placed both hands on my shoulders. I looked into the depths of his eyes and knew that I would do whatever he wanted me to do. ‘I love you and you love me and we should be married. Go home now and tell your parents about me, and we will be married soon.’
‘What if they won’t let me?’ I said.
‘Then we shall run away, far away, and be together.’
I was sixteen then. His words were honeyed, his hands made me feel things I had never felt before, and every night before I went to sleep I would run my fingers along my lips remembering the feel of his mouth. I was never going to tell him no.
I waited until my father was home to speak to them. I was so nervous I felt nauseous. All hell broke loose. I had known that it would. I didn’t look at them as I spoke. We were sitting around the dining room table and my mother said, ‘Rose, eat, eat, you need to eat.’
‘I have something to tell you,’ I said, pushing my fork through some cabbage, rearranging it into small piles on my plate. I spoke quickly, not letting my mother’s gasp or the sound of my father pushing back his chair, stop me. When I was done I finally looked up. My mother had her hand over her mouth and my father’s fists were clenched.
‘You are making a joke, Rose,’ said my mother. ‘This is a joke?’
‘No, Mama,’ I said.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said and she sounded genuinely bewildered, ‘we have not met him and he is a man. How can you be with a man? You are a child.’
‘I’m not a child. I’m grown up. I love him and I’m going to marry him.’
‘It is illegal,’ roared my father, ‘It must be illegal. We will have him arrested.’
‘I’ll run away,’ I said, pushing my hands under my legs so that they wouldn’t see how hard they were shaking. ‘You’ll never see me again.’
‘Don’t you dare say such things,’ said my mother. ‘Do you know what we have given up for you? Do you know how hard we work?’
I knew they would drag out all their weaponry, and I was prepared. Growing up I had been told over and over again that they both came from large families where days without food were common. My father had arrived in Australia fresh from fighting in the resistance, which he had joined at the tender age of sixteen, and as an immigrant he had never progressed further in his job than the factory floor. He and my mother had decided together to only have one child so that they would be able to feed that child, spoil that child, give it everything. But the truth was that it was too great a responsibility for me. Every time I walked into a test or sat down to write an essay I thought first of my parents and then what I had to do. Simon was going to rescue me from having to be the perfect daughter. It is no wonder that I grabbed at the chance of what I thought was freedom, and perhaps it is also no wonder that I was so suited to becoming the woman Simon needed in his life. I had already been trained well in the art of putting others before myself.
‘If I’m married you won’t have to work hard anymore. Simon will take care of me.’
‘We know nothing about this man,’ shouted my father. ‘He’s thirty-one. Do you know that he is nearly old enough to be your father? He is using you for your youth, for your body.’ My father was forty, only nine years older than Simon.
‘Oh my God, oh my God, please tell me you’re not pregnant!’ said my mother.
‘No, I’m not pregnant. I’m in love. I don’t care if he’s older. I’m going to marry him and you can’t stop me.’
‘I will lock you in this house for the rest of your life!’ spluttered my father.
‘Peter, please,’ said my mother. ‘Calm down. We need to speak of this. Please stay calm. Rose, you cannot get married. You’re too young. You need to finish school. You wanted to be a teacher. You will regret this, my darling, you will regret it forever.’
‘I want to marry him, Mama, I have to marry him. I love him and he loves me. I want you to meet him and like him, but if you don’t then I will leave and you will never see me again.’
‘How can you say such things to your mother? Go to your room. You’re a brat, an ungrateful brat. Go, go now!’
I got up from the table, knocking over my chair, and ran to my room. I locked the door and threw everything I wanted to take into a bag. And then I waited.
All night long I heard my parents shouting at each other. I knew they had met when both were sixteen. I hoped my mother would persuade my father, but he would not relent. As dawn broke and my parents were finally silent, I unpacked my bag. I knew what they were going to do, but I had already formulated a plan. They would not keep me from Simon. That was the only thing I was absolutely sure of.
My mother came to my room an hour later and asked me to join them for breakfast. Her eyes were swollen, her shoulders rounded with the burden of my betrayal. I felt a pain above my ribs. I was hurting her and I didn’t want to hurt her but then I thought of Simon and I didn’t care anymore. They told me I was never allowed to see Simon again.
‘You will not walk home from school anymore,’ said my mother. ‘I will drive you there and I will fetch you. You may not go out at all. If you leave the house to go to the shops or the dentist or anything like that, one of us needs to be with you. Understand that we do this for your own good, because we love you.’
I wanted to protest, to scream and cry, but I realised that there would be no point.
I packed as many of my things as I could fit in my schoolbag and submitted to being driven to school. Once there I told the school secretary that I was feeling sick and asked to be allowed to call my mother. Instead, of course, I called Simon, and he came to fetch me.
You could get married at sixteen then. We applied for a licence and spent the weeks we had to wait moving from one friend’s house to another. Simon lied to his friends about my age. It seemed the easiest thing to do.
My parents sent the police after me, but by the time they found us it was too late. I was Mrs Simon Winslow and I refused to leave him. Simon was thoroughly charming and explained it all so sensibly to the police that I’m sure my parents landed up looking slightly insane. My father had accused Simon of kidnapping me. ‘You can see, sir,’ said Simon, ‘that I have done no such thing. Rose, you are free to go home. You can return to your parents and we can get divorced, even though we love each other and all we want is to be together.’
‘I won’t go,’ I said.
‘Sir, she is happy to be with me. Perhaps her parents do not like me because I’m not Polish, but this is Australia, isn’t it? Here people are free to do as they please, and if you take her home I’m sure they will lock her up and never let her leave the house.’
‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘They will.’
‘I’m sure you’re both married,’ said Simon. ‘I’m sure you know what it’s like to be in love with a beautiful girl.’ And the police officers nodded their heads and laughed, murmuring something about young love.
My parents had underestimated Simon and the power he had over me. I loved them, but I was willing to give them up for him. I was willing to give up everything. I gave up school and my dreams of a future teaching children and I never even gave it much thought.
It’s not as though I have just come to these realisation
s. I’ve always known that there was an imbalance of power in my marriage, always known and always accepted Simon as the master of my destiny. I’m sure that I would not be the first woman to be swept away so entirely by a man. My first year with Simon was a dream, and by the time I woke up and began to question what I’d done, I had a child and another on the way. And I still loved him, which is perhaps the most important thing. I still loved him—and despite it all, I still love him now. I don’t think anything will ever change that, because even as I took his life in the knowledge of who he truly was, I could not let go of that love. I cannot out-think it. I cannot get it to dissipate. It is there, lodged firmly inside me, colouring everything.
He wanted me and he got me. I was young enough to be groomed into being the perfect wife. I hadn’t established an identity for myself and was happy for him to provide one for me. He gave me books to read and took me to movies and museums.
When he started making proper money, money that allowed us to buy what we wanted, he would come shopping with me. He liked to see every outfit I bought. He steered me away from anything that made me look older, always preferring me in clothes that emphasised my youth, my slight figure, the smallness of my waist. ‘You are a delicate flower,’ he would say to me. ‘You should wear only the lightest, most beautiful fabrics.’
The week before I was convicted, I ventured out to a store to buy some new clothes to wear to court. I began my search for clothing among the lilacs and pinks that Simon always liked to see me in, but kept drifting back to black and grey. I realise that I prefer those colours, although I did not know that about myself until now, until the ripe old age of fifty-five.
He made me into what I am today. I’m sure he never expected me to turn on him. He never expected that.
He was very hard to disagree with. Sometimes I would be arguing with him about something and he would laugh and say, ‘But my darling girl, why are you so angry? You are busy agreeing with me,’ and I would realise that while I had started out on the opposing side, I had been manoeuvred out of my own thoughts and feelings.